Zen Internet Support Forum

I've been with Zen on their 8000 Lite package since 3rd August 2007 and am very impressed by (a) amazing speed (BT speed checker: 6240 kbps); (b) excellent support portal; (c) worked "out of the box" with minimal hassle; (d) reliability.

BUT! I now realise just how little 2Gb per month is. Man, this line EATS data like there's no tomorrow. It struck me last night that where I had been using dial-up for years and complaining about the slow speed, it was at least free, once I'd paid my £14.99 a month. I could dial up as often as I wanted and stay online for hours at a time if I wanted to. I could leave unimportant downloads to complete while I went shopping, it didn't cost me a bean extra. Now, however, EVERYthing I do online is counted! The BBC parliament or newscasts, Channel 4 snippets, YouTube videos - my 2Gb disappeared faster than snow on a hot griddle. Every downloaded byte is like death by a thousand cuts. I've already had to buy more capacity and August is only half-done.

Now, while buying extra download was a doddle, it ain't cheap! £1.49 per Gb doesn't sound like a lot, but when it's gone in a flash movie or two, it is! And when I compare the price of Lite with that of Active, it seems like the logical choice is to grab another 18 Gb per month for an extra £7 and regrade to Active.

But will 20Gb be enough? I'm having my doubts. I think in the Age of the Internet 2Gb is pitifully low, 20Gb is miserly and a reasonable download capacity for a price one can afford should start at around 50Gb.

I don't know whether Zen are contemplating their capacities, but I don't have a bottomless money-pit to draw funds from. Like everything in this life, I have to look at the competition and weigh up the pros and cons.

Indeed 2GB/month isn't a lot once you start using the internet for more than just browsing and e-mail. A few large downloads and some streaming radio and video could quite easily eat through that. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of scope for reducing the cost/GB under the current wholesale charges from BT, so if you're likely to download much more than 2GB/month regularly upgrading to the Active package would seem the obvious step.

 
Personally I find 20 GB is usually enough for me with plenty of general usage, a good bit of WoW playing a week and a reasonable chunk of large downloads.
Some months I use more than that, and some months I use a fair bit less. (fortunately as a Zen staff member I have a Pro account chucked in though so its less of a worry for me.)
I would guess that if you're not a heavy p2p or Newsgroup user 20GB will probably be enough, but of course I don't know how you use your own connection. If you log into the portal you can see more detailed usage (such as average per day, and a chart showing daily usage over the current month) Also there are some beta clients available for you to install on your computer which will show you at a glance how much is being used (see the sticky thread at the top of this forum for details)

 

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Kindest regards,

James Sweet
http://www.zen.co.uk

I was interested to hear about those beta usage gizmos, since that was going to be my next search, to see whether I could determine on the fly how much each action at the computer "costs" me in terms of capacity consumption.

The thing is, where I was able with dial-up to do a number of things that were essentially "free" (after paying the monthly fee to Orange), now they are not. Right now (8:40 on Wednesday morning) I've switched on a live steam to the Today programme. It saves me from having to disconnect my bedroom radio and move it into the computer room. But under dial-up I could listen to the BBC all day for "free". Okay, so the audio stream was sometimes interrupted, but it was a small price to pay in comnparison with now, under broadband.

Anyway, I can see that the ball, as ever, is more in BT's court rather than Zen's, so I'll start looking further into the way BT works out its wholesale charging, especially in comparison with other countries. For example, it seems from what I've read that the provision of broadband in France is far more advanced and greater value for money than in the UK, so this fundamental question may be something the government may be interested in.